Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Google- your search ends here

That title, folks, absurdly enough is the name of a mouth freshener Vinod offered me at Andhra Cafe.
Tagline and all.

"The amount of stock the owner thought would last an year, got sold out in a month", he said, proudly, before continuing, "It's got Sodium Saccharin in it, which is unhealthy, but you know, what isn't?", matter-of-factly.

My last fortnight has been filled with experiences like these, not exactly bizarre but a little out of the ordinary; Interesting enough to bring me out of the rut, but not so much that I lose all my bearings. The wheels of my second short finally seem to be rumbling into momentum, thanks mainly to Sravani, and I've been meeting all kinds of people to discuss it. And coming back to Facebook has had its share of quiet surprises. Getting back onto the social juggernaut seemed intimidating at first, the information overload was tremendous, but I've talked to a lot of people I've been meaning to since a long time. Which made me think about an article I read about Facebook and Twitter, in which the author argues that the relationships formed through these networks are emotionally wafer-thin. I agreed with him when I read it, which I see a lot of people do, but once I've gotten back and am pinging friends to fury, I think he didn't get all of it right. It might be true that what we see about the other person is a masked version of himself, that he's creating a virtual image of himself that he wants the world to see him as, but that's true to any social interaction. One, all of us are modelling ourselves in a certain way to create a perfect balance between what we are, what we want to be and how we want the world to see us. That is as much true to the physical world as to the virtual. But two, more importantly, how a man creates an image of himself and what that image turns out to be, when observed over a period of time reveal his true identity.

I personally got off Facebook because I thought I was spending too much time on it instead of doing something productive. But then I spent so much time on it because I didn't have anything interesting to do. And either way, who of us can predict, looking into the future, which of our actions are productive. It's a truly ridiculous notion, to live a life with one eye on the benefits to be reaped in the future. Another reason I got off Facebook was because, which I recently read in a study to be true, it started depressing me. The study said that since people only post updates either when they are happy or when they think they are living a meaningful lives, each of us assumes that everyone else is leading a more fulfilling life than us. And this I think is a rather accurate reason but I'm sure we're going to adapt to this too, and level the effect out, because we've already turned Facebook into an Irani Cafe like environment where after a hard day's work, we can unwind and relax.

Anyway, I had a great time at the ComicCon. We, me, Kishore and Vivek, bought this mini-series comic book called Aghori, published by Holy Cow, and I absolutely loved it. And since going totally berserk over the beauty and genius of comic as an art form, after reading the tremendously powerful Daytripper by Gabriel and Fabia, I've been encountering some great stuff- Ramayan 3392 AD, Grant Morrison's 18 Days, Jim Ottiviani's Feynman and Jess3's The Zen of Steve Jobs. I watched a couple of good movies too, Rush and The Lunchbox, thought Battle Royale was extremely overrated and still am ambiguous of my feelings about Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. Reading has been paltry because of the rather mediocre books I've chosen, Haruki Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about Running and Vikas Swarup's Q & A, but Mary Roach's Stiff has been a rather whimsical read. But the most rewarding development has been by sudden interest in Hard Rock. I started searching for music for my next short, and to the suit the mood, I started browsing Hard Rock and Metal albums. I highly recommend Sam Dunn's Metal: A headbanger's journey and it's sequel, Global Metal, for anyone who's looking to get into the genre, because it provides a great launching pad for total noobs. I discovered Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and consequently, Eluveitie and Nine Inch Nails. Another serendipitous discovery has been Joe Satriani's Unstoppable Momentum. Invigorating.

It's been a rather eventful fortnight, meetings with old friends and strangers with shared passions, infusion into things I never thought I'd be interested in and stumbling across insanely interesting books. Its been a period where I have spent less time obsessing about the past or the future, instead acting upon things that captivate me now.

As I re-read the post, I realise I've done a very patchy job. But I'm glad it's out.